Mountain Walks in Ella

My next stop was a tiny town called Ella, which is in the middle of the hilly/mountainous part of Sri Lanka. To get there we drove along winding roads around the side of the hills and mountains and just as we arrived it began to poor with rain. It was getting late in the day and it turned out that Ella was already full of tourists and so the only places left to stay were expensive guest houses. Instead, I was very fortunate and found a lovely family who put me up in their spare room and made me tasty and huge portions of food. My room was at the other end of the house to where the family slept, and to get to it I had to negotiate my way through no end of toys and ornaments and plastic flowers.

I spent a day hiking in the mountains with a couple from France who I’d met on the bus. We went up to a place called Little Adam’s Peak, which is the light green peak directly behind me in the photo (taken on Ella Rock). From there we could see a beautiful peak which I really wanted to climb (the third photo down). We didn’t know how or even if it was possible, and we to set off towards a peak called Ella Rock.

We followed the railway line and then cut through villages and forest until finally we reached the top. To our delight we realized that Ella Rock was the peak we could see from Little Adam’s Peak. The views from both places were wonderful and although it rained torrentially on and off for the whole day, the sun did come out for us at the top of Ella Rock. Unfortunately so did the leaches though!

At the end of the day, exhausted and soaking wet from the rain and the effects of humidity I remembered I had a problem (which wasn’t related to the leaches). Were I was staying there was a normal squat toilet, but there didn’t seem to be anywhere to wash. There weren’t any taps inside and I would have been happy to have a bucket wash but there didn’t seem to be anywhere private to go, apart from into the tiny toilet which I didn’t really fancy. Only one member of the family spoke English and as I prepared myself to most likely look like a fool whilst inquiring how exactly people did wash there, my new friends very kindly invited me to use their hot water shower – what a relief! I never did find out how that family washes.